We are welcoming Man City at Home today. With United and Spurs hardly relevant these days, we had got a new enemy and MLS made sure to remove your doubts about it with his Haaland celebration after scoring one last season. Today – it’s going to be the continuation of that.
Pep has lost some of his gems recently and has been trying to fix it. He hasn’t find a solution yet, but even at his worst, he can find a way to win. We have got two tasks today, to not let him win and because we are going for the title, to make sure we walk out of the game with 3 points. If you can’t beat the City or Liverpool at home, you don’t expect to win the league.
I was furious last week when Mikel picked up a midfield of Merino, Zubimendi and Rice against Athelti. We won the game but it was too slow in the transition and it took an individual brilliance of Martinelli to break the deadlock. Mikel has chosen the same midfield again today, and that’s the Mourinho’s way of handling Pep. I can understand the feeling that not losing it today is important to keep the confidence running in boys, but it doesn’t mean I agree with it.
If you gonna be best, you gotta take out the best. You can’t do that by going all defensive. We have got Eze, who is a natural Odegaard’s replacement, we have Nwaneri who was kept and given a new contract for that very position and yet, we go with two and a half defensive midfielders if not three.
That’s bonkers!
Anyways, Saka and Martinelli are on bench with Eze. Again, seeing Trossard doesn’t make sense ahead of Marts. Against City, you want to create chaos and who’s better than the Brazillian for it?
Gyokeres retains his place, at least Mikel didn’t go for an injured Havertz ahead of him, because hey, not losing is more important that winning these days. Saliba makes his way back to the team, so hopefully we would be able to contain Haaland today.
—
It’s still too early for the hype but with 5 wins in 5 games, Liverpool at rocking at the top. We need to be as close to them as possible because at some point, they will run out of the luck (like we did in the past couple times) and we would be able to capitalize it. City will eventually pick their 10 games to go unbeaten at some point in the season.
We are going in the game with some positives. We haven’t lost to City in our last 4 games winning 2 of them and they have lost both of the visits to Arsenal recently. Lets hope we add another win today to these stats.
A very short one today but I will be available during the game. Cheers
“balanced”—You’re fucking hilarious!!! context matters…maybe just naybe those possession numbers had something to do with them having 8 defenders on the pitch for a chunk of time in the second half…not to mention they played on Thursday evening…btw your trolling verbiage is duly noted Blunty McBlunterson
maybe just maybe
TRVL
City played a home game v napoli on Thursday , no travelling and a nice comfortable win , and yet you think that is the reason they defended so deeply with a 32% possession rate in the whole game.
The reason they had “8 defenders on the pitch for a chunk of the time in the 2nd half ” is because we are a better football team than city and pep knows that , it’s that simple.
Last season at city we were slaughtered for trying to hold onto a one goal lead with ten men and yet you are defending city for being completely dominated by Arsenal with city having 11 men on the pitch…….context.?
Also for context , last season we played Atlanta AWAY on the Thursday before we drew AWAY at city with 10 men on the sunday …..and were slaughtered by the media and entitled Arsenal fans for being so defensive.
I can guarantee you that it won’t be city who will be slaughtered by media and fans for putting 11 men behind the ball today.
For further “context ” , city played against a 10 man napoli for 70 minutes on Thursday…
firstly, my little mental midget, it’s certainly not unusual that a road team facing another possession-based side might concede that battle, depending on how effective the home team was with that possession…we had 1 shot on target and 1 “big” chance in the first half with 68% possession and they were a goal up, so if that’s what you refer to as domination, you’ve got a lot to fucking learn (which comes as a surpirse to no one)…secondly, after the break, when City were defending an away lead and making obvious defensive-minded subs, it was clear those stats weren’t going to drastically change…by game’s end, we had 3 shots on target and still only 1 big chance (to their 2)…so maybe it would be prudent if you simply looked at the facts instead of being a Rice-inspired muppet with all your nonsensical talk of domination…please keep in mind that I raked Pep over the coals for his gutless approach, much in the same vein as I slaughtered Arteta for starting a very negative 11, so it’s not a biased take…unlike yourself, I call it like it is…no blinders on here
surprise
Wouldn’t life be nicer if you could just swap things over really easily….
Apparently there’s a large number of Shit on the Villa fans who want Emery gone.
TRVL
“maybe just naybe those possession numbers had something to do with them having 8 defenders on the pitch for a chunk of time in the second half…not to mention they played on Thursday evening”
THIS is you defending city’s tactics which I have debunked.
As far as I’m concerned Arteta’s starting line up and tactics in the first half were wrong and negative and he should be criticised.
As for Arsenal’s inability to create chances I made the point last week that we haven’t scored a goal with that midfield 3 in what is now over 200 minutes, whereas with Nwaneri on the pitch we have 8 goals in 130 mins.
I will not defend Arteta if he continues to select such a negative midfield when he has so many more creative options .
Newcastle away next week is usually our toughest test of the season and I can’t see anything other than Arteta going for the tried and trusted despite the tried and trusted usually being found wanting against a very physical Newcastle side.
Personally I’d like to see some pace in the side meaning starting Eze , martinelli up top with Madueke and saka on the wings but I can’t see that happening unfortunately, Arteta will probably go like for like against Newcastle which hasn’t worked previously and I doubt will work this time despite Newcastle going into the game with little or no confidence.
Somebody needs to advise El B that dominate does not mean win. His post match interviews always include ‘we dominated (whatever team was being played at the time) the game and had a larger percentage of the play.
El B wants to get rid of Martinelli, Martinelli wants to go – Martinelli has put himself in the shop window by playing how he wants to play and not listening to the cautious one. We are already 5 points behind Liverpool who know they are not playing at their best – if they do we will definitely finish second or lower. The guy at Bournemouth will be thinking to himself – time for a change – London N5 looks a good option.
your continued rinse and repeat debate methodology will typically fall on deaf ears as it mistakenly implies that the conclusions you’ve drawn are irrefutable, which couldn’t be further from the truth…both managers were gutless, but only one of the two was even the slightest bit justified in doing so…Pep was the road side, who both had the lead and played on Thursday…now you might deem that latter fact as relatively unimportant, whereas I would argue that when you’re desperately trying to load-manage several prominent players, most notably Rodri and Haaland, it’s vitally important…Pep got a gander at what life was like without these two individuals last season and he didn’t like what he witnessed, so his PTSD kicked in
meanwhile back at Gutless Central, where our little MIT continues to deploy his try not to lose nonsense from the off, it doesn’t seem to matter how many billions of dollars are spent…in fact we were incredibly fortunate that we even got a point out of that one, regardless of the in-match stats involving possession (which btw doesn’t make sense if your “domination” nonsense is to be believed)…for us possession is like a poisoned pill tactic, as it’s primarily deployed as a way to kill time while likewise styming the offensive opportunities of the opposition… if you want to get at a Pep-run side you generally need to expose their countering Achilles heel when they’re in goalscoring mode, not once they’re determined to sit deep and defend…as such it doesn’t surprise me whatsoever that we struggled to create grade A chances even when we threw our proverbial kitchen sink at them…thankfully we were able to take advantage of the thinnest of margins, but that certainly can’t be our go-to strategy moving forward…class dismissed
With all the condemnation of Arteta’s team selection and tactics , what has gone under the radar is the brilliance of Eze’s two assists against forest and city. Both were absolutely world class assists that only the likes of Debruyne, Bergkamp or Ozil were capable of.
Technique, composure and weight of pass is the key and Eze has that in abundance. Sometimes a pass for an assist has a margin of error and sometimes a pass has to be inch perfect with no margin of error, the pass from Eze to martinelli yesterday had no margin of error and the weight of the pass had to be perfect as was Martinelli’s first touch.
Unfortunately I’m not sure Arteta will be as impressed by Eze’s assist as I am , put it this way , I’m not sure that Odegaard would have even attempted that pass as it is one of the hardest in football to get right as it was basically a straight ball over the top of 3 centre backs and a keeper on the edge of his area…
Eze has to start but I’m not sure if he is an Arteta type player as he gives the impression of being too laid back and relaxed , whereas Arteta likes a worker or a player that looks busy like Odegaard but sometimes you need a player with that exceptional vision and ability to open up a defence similar to what we saw yesterday.
AF might disagree but Ozil (our worst ever signing) is not fit to suck the sweat off of Eze’s (one of our best ever signings) balls. That pass to Martinelli was sublime – you’re right.
Something happened in the city game that hasn’t really been mentioned but fortunately the referee defused the situation.
In the 2nd half Bernardo Silva embarrassed himself by doing his utmost to get Trossard sent off by first throwing the ball towards trossard and then rolling in mock agony when trossard returned the favour..
If you go back 12 months we had a similar situation when Rice was sent off when the Brighton player clearly conned the ref but the ref fell for it and surprise surprise almost all the media and pundits agreed with the red card.
Probably the outcome on sunday should have been a yellow for both trossard and silva but that was never going to happen as silva was already on a yellow , it is very rare to see a city player see red isn’t it..
I’m amazed that such incidents of cheating (by silva) are not highlighted though unfortunately it has become an accepted part of the game , I would point out that I also don’t like our players embarrassing themselves feigning injury which is something that Arteta has brought to the club , wenger must cringe at some of the antics as he believed in the beautiful game.
Unfortunately the clubs that are more adept at bending the rules are usually the most successful , though trying to bend the rules will never work at Arsenal as the officials and media will come down on us like a ton of bricks , the proof is in the soft red cards last season of Rice , Trossard, Saliba and skelly along with a few highly dubious penalties, Everton and Brighton spring to mind, I would advice Arteta to stick to playing football and forget about trying to manipulate situations as they rarely fall in our favour especially when you have the likes of neville and carragher ready to jump on any incidents regarding Arsenal.
Wicksy
Rice was sent off on a second yellow for kicking the ball away. Was it a petty decision – yes, have we seen other players do it and not get booked – yes but it was still a stupid thing for Rice to do.
Wicksy
Silva has been a bigger cheat that Mane was at Liverpool. In the current league, he would most certainly win the Ballon d’Or of being a cunt by a mile. Richarlison, Guimaraes, Martinez would fight for the 2nd place.
Eze is a class player, it’s still to early to go into his stats at Arsenal but comes the end of the season, he would be a regular for us. He is not a Arteta/Pep kind of player though in my opinion. He brings chaos, just like Martinelli and it would either lift the team (which i think) or he would gradually lose the spark.
Wicksy
I am not against making a mistake and then rectifying it. Mikel was defensive in first half, the team selection was wrong and he tried to fix it by bringing in Saka and Eze.
What bothers me is that I wrote this article 30min before the game, and I had said that this team selection will not work. We can keep the ball all we want, but City won’t let us transition the ball from midfield to front 3 when we have Merino, Rice and Zubi playing in that midfield.
At the end of the season, 10 draws will fetch us 10 points but a 50% win rate by going on offense will get us 15. If we lose, we lose but lets do that the Wenger way, not the Mourinho way. Gyokeres is hardly getting any service because by the time ball reaches to him, opposition players are back in their formations. You can’t keep passing between your midfielders and defence and then hope some of the players sleep.
A hypothetical question, how many of you think Arsene would have won the league with our current set of players – considering he was managing the defence with Mustafi, midfield with Xhaka and no DM?
Ambarish—the pre-Emirates version would have won the League 2 of the last 3 seasons, whereas the latter days version would have continually tripped over his own dick much in the same manner as our present poor man’s version…it’s important to remember that it was Wenger himself who both coveted and purchased the players you mentioned, so don’t state it as if those were someone else’s decisions…btw I totally agree with your very astute wins versus draws math take, problem is that our little MIT feels that he can always conjure up one of his excuse-laden narratives, such as the always slurped-up conspiratorial officiating nonsense, so long as our loss column doesn’t exceed that of the last couple of seasons…it’s gutless managing 101